A question:
I have been able to download and install a whole bunch of the development libs that I need. They all installed in /usr/lib. There are a couple that I use that I need to compile by hand (which works, BTW), but they install in /usr/local/lib.

It looks like Easy Debian is only set up to search for stuff in /lib and /usr/lib. I've been trying to find the correct config file to change to add to that path, but I'm not having any luck.
So far I've tried .profile in my home and roots home directory, /etc/profile, /etc/bash.bashrc, and roots .bashrc. No joy.

I can get changes to take effect in the osso-xterm by putting them in the /home/user/.profile, but these do not seem to be inherited by Easy Debian. Does anyone know the correct place to make these additions in Easy Debian.

Update:
You did too good of a job qole! I forgot this was a chroot! Chroots don't inherit permissions from their pre-chroot parent and don't (at least yours doesn't) run any kind of login script, they just 'show up' with a root prompt at the top of the chroot tree.
So, now on to discover how/who Nokia/packager does their chroot. Some versions can be persuaded to pass in a new $PATH at chroot. And/or always run a certain program (like a login shell).

Also, should anyone else feel the need to roll their own, the debian chroot system does have /etc/ld.so.conf (well, actually it's in ld.so.conf.d) set up for /usr/local/lib in ldconfig, but it since it was never run and/or (not sure with debian) /usr/local/lib was empty, it doesn't look there. Re-running ldconfig fixes that problem.